As published
in the Queen Anne Cobblestone, November 2005
Small
Town Queen Anne
By Kim Turner, QAHS board member, and Research Chair
Just in time for Thanksgiving. We live in a fascinating place.
Geologically, geographically, and with all the fun and foibles
that people bring to a region. Queen Anne has been home to
persons of every walk of life. It has also been home to bears,
cougars, rabbits, deer, squirrels, moles, voles, garter snakes
and racers, and various other animals. It has been home to
Senators, both state and Federal, and to Congressmen and Congresswomen,
to doctors, educators, ministers, scientists, lawyers, meat
packers, grocers, pharmacists, policemen and firemen, librarians
and research specialists, to members of the acting community
and to various dealers of collectibles, antiques and jewelers.
Musicians and conductors have made their homes on the hill.
In short, there are few occupations that have not had their
practitioners living on Queen Anne Hill.
In the mid-1930s, Queen Anne was referred to in a news item
which gave the fact that if lifted out of Seattle and placed
just about anywhere in the Midwest, Queen Anne Hill and its
community would be a good-sized town of from 30,000 to 40,000
people. The population has stayed fairly constant, even with
the rise of major apartment buildings on the hill. As some
areas became more commercial, others stayed much as they had
for the better part of a century or more.
I have been going through some early issues of the KUAY, the
Queen Anne High School weekly newspaper, a broken file which
runs from the first years (1909-10) through 1950 and into January
of 1951. There is a wealth of material about Queen Anne residents
in it—including the notices of deaths of parents of students
attending the school. There are sad stories, such as the young
man who had just graduated from Queen Anne in 1919 or 1920,
who was earning money to attend college by working in the logging
industry, and who was killed, when crushed to death by a log.
He was only 19. The list of visitors to speak at Queen Anne
High School assemblies is noteworthy. Among others, the explorer
Roald Amundsen came in the early 1920s.
With some of our great houses in jeopardy, it behooves us to
remember to record all that we can of the contributions of
each generation of Queen Anners, whether new to the Hill and
its environs, or descended from a multi-generational family
who still live on the Hill.
Kim R. Turner, Research Chair
More Kim's Musings
 
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